


Tales of Love and Easy Virtue

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural, length: medium
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-15
Updated: 2010-05-15
Packaged: 2017-10-14 11:03:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/148615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean had fought too many nightmares to believe in dreams. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t have them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tales of Love and Easy Virtue

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [](http://meresy.livejournal.com/profile)[**meresy**](http://meresy.livejournal.com/) for pulling beta duty, and for all the great Thursday fangirl viewing parties.

  
  
  
  
**Entry tags:**   
|   
[fandom: supernatural](http://fic-by-nos.livejournal.com/tag/fandom%3A%20supernatural), [length: medium](http://fic-by-nos.livejournal.com/tag/length%3A%20medium)  
  
---|---  
  
  


  
**Tales of Love and Easy Virtue**   


Dean woke with a start at 2:30am. He could hear rain pattering against the window, and he blinked up at the dark ceiling above, listening to the soft staccato beat. There was a warm, sleeping body wrapped around him, and the strangeness of it made it impossible for Dean to slide back into sleep.

Debbie? Sherrie? ie-something, he thought, trying to shrug off the stupor of sex and alcohol. Whoever she was, the woman wrapped around him smelled like bacon grease and stale sweat. He eased himself away from her, nearly catching one boney elbow in the eye, and sat up. Cheap beer sloshed unpleasantly in his stomach, and Dean clutched at his head.

He couldn’t quite figure out what had woken him. Some small noise, maybe, something that wouldn’t have registered for a normal person but sounded like a thunderclap to him.

When he could finally focused, Dean saw a small figure standing in the doorway. Not a ghost or a demon, just a tiny, wide-eyed boy in footy pajamas. The kid was staring at Dean like he’d just seen the Boogeyman.

 _You’ve got no idea, kid_ , Dean thought.

“Mommy?” the little boy whispered, and the faint, vulnerable sound hung in the air between them. Dean glanced at—Mary? Pattie? Sandy?—but she was out cold, stone drunk and probably stoned, too, if Dean’s fragmented memories of the night before were anything to go by. He remembered a lot of beer, pot and whiskey, all of which was a clearer memory than the sex. Probably more satisfying, too.

“Ugh,” Dean grunted, giving ie-Something-the-Maybe-Waitress a gentle shove. Nothing. She was naked. Dean pulled the covers up to shield her scrawny body from the chilly night air, and to spare the kid.

He checked on the boy, who was still watching him with wide-eyed fear.

Dean got out of bed, almost yelping when he stepped on something cold and slimy. The relief that flooded over him when Dean realized it wasn’t a skinwalker's rejects or a piece of human flesh was instantly replaced by disgust. The condom. He’d been too fucking high last night to bother looking for a trashcan.

“Ugh,” he grunted again. Kid had to think he was a caveman, which was probably better than thinking of him as some scumbag who’d just fucked the kid’s mother.

Dean groped for his clothes in the dark. He and Sammy hadn’t been able to hit a laundromat in a while—trying to avert an Apocalypse was hell on the housekeeping—and he located his jeans and t-shirt mainly by smell. His clothes’d been pretty dirty to begin with, and a night of booze, dope and sloppy sex hadn’t really improved the odeur du Dean. He couldn’t find his underwear. Hell, he might not have even bothered with them in the first place, now that he thought about it. Dean pulled on his jeans with a grimace.

The kid had been staring at him the whole time, and the combination of terror and confusion on his face made Dean want to jump out the nearest window. Instead he opened his mouth, hunting around for the right thing to say. _Sorry about your life, kiddo._ Or, _it’ll be okay_. Which was a blatant lie, although it something a little kid would believe. Like Santa Claus, or the Easter Bunny. Or God.

Dean shook himself, trying to focus. He couldn’t think of what to say. No kid should have to watch some loser climb out of his mother’s bed and stumble into six-days-past-expiry clothes while searching for words of apology. Dean did them both a favour and left without saying anything at all.

The little boy watched him go with bruised, accusing eyes.

It was freezing outside, and even his leather jacket couldn’t protect Dean from the icy wind and rain of a February morning in Michigan. He dug his hands into his pockets (car keys, empty package of Doritos, hilt of a small dagger) and looked around for his baby.

Dean really, really hoped that he’d left the Impala parked behind whatever skuzzy bar or diner he’d picked ie-Something up at. It’d take some time—one of the many luxuries he doesn’t have—to find it again, but at least the car would be safe. Dean was a shitty driver when he was drunk, and the thought of risking the Impala on the ice-slick roads of Dearborn made him feel a little queasy. That, or the final whiskey chaser from last night.

Seemed today was his lucky day. There wasn’t any sight of his car along the street. Just some lame imports and a few rusting Made In the USA heaps. But no sleek black Chevy. With a sigh of relief, Dean turned up his collar against the wind and began to walk down the dark street, glancing up every so often at the houses around him.

It was a lousy neighbourhood. Muddy wet snow drifted up against old car parts and rusting oil heaters. The front lawns were bare except for the junk, which made the whole street look a little like one big scrap yard. It made him a little homesick for Bobby’s, actually, but Dean couldn’t help thinking of another neighbourhood hundreds of miles away. One with nicely manicured lawns, swing sets in the back, SUVs and minivans parked out front.

Lisa. Funny, but he still remembered the pattern of the curtains in her windows, the way the flowers out front sent sweet perfumes wafting up to mix with the earthy smell of fresh-cut grass. He could almost hear the drone of bees flitting in among the tulips and daisies Lisa had planted, and the sounds of Ben playing in the backyard.

It was funny, but he didn’t usually let himself think about it. He saved the memory of the house on Cypress Lane for when things got really bad, or he was in too much pain to focus on anything else. The image of the house came easily to him, faster now than his mother’s face, or the sensation of flying down Route 66 with Sam in the seat beside him. His happy place. And wasn’t that a fucking joke, since it was the one place in America that he wouldn’t let himself visit, except in his memories?

After ten minutes of walking, Dean’s cheeks were numb, and his feet felt like ice blocks. He cut north through a park. The streets looked only vaguely familiar, and he considered calling Sam. But it wasn’t even 4am yet, and Dean didn’t really want to wake him. Sam’d only bitch about it, and ask Dean a million questions about where he’d been. Not like Sam had never disappeared on Dean before, of course, but Sam’d been pretty clingy since the whole returned-from-the-dead thing. And Dean already felt shitty enough about the waitress without saying anything about her to Sam.

Finally he rounded a corner and hit a main drag, cars streaming by even at ass-o’clock in the morning. He blinked against the headlights and kept walking west past strip malls, silent factories and used car dealerships. It was official: Dearborn was a fucking ugly town.

He finally found his car parked outside of a strip joint. Surprising, since ie-Something hadn’t really had much going for her, asset-wise. Maybe she was just a waitress there, since the sign above the strip club advertised The Best Wings in Michigan. Or maybe she really had been a stripper, and he was just being an asshole.

The icy leather seat of the Impala almost made him yelp—one strike against going commando—and Dean let the car’s heater run for a few minutes before pulling out. He headed for the motel, making the turns almost automatically even though he’d only been to Dearborn once before, and when he reached the Motel 6 Dean guided the car into a spot out front and killed the engine.

The heater hadn’t done much to combat the early-morning chill but he sat there anyway, fingers twitching against the icy steering wheel. He stared at the crumbling motel with its peeling paint and blinking red –AC-NCY sign, trying to find the energy to get out of the car and go inside.

Maybe it was the rain, or the cold, or the Midwestern darkness, or the fact that he’d just fucked some stripper/waitress whose name he couldn’t remember. Or that her kid had sad, angry eyes. But he just couldn’t move.

How the hell did people go on? It wasn’t a question he asked himself often. Given the way he lived his life, a lack of introspection was decidedly for the best. But how did people who didn’t have any hope go on? How did they manage to get up every damn day and get on with the business of living?

He knew he had more than most people. He had Sam, although lately that hadn’t felt like enough. There was a distance there that reminded him of the Grand Canyon, or at least what he imagined the Grand Canyon to be: wide, and deep, and so long that when you shouted into it your voice could carry for miles. But he had Bobby, and the Impala, and he even had a mission. A heaven-sent mission, no less.

But none of it was enough. Not this early, and not in Michigan at four-thirty in the morning.

He thought of Lisa’s place again, that sweet little house with its green lawn and white shutters and its promise of everything he’d never had. Funny, how he thought more about the house than he did about Lisa. She was there, of course, his dark-eyed girl who smiled at him, loved him, despite the things he’d done. That she was more imagination than reality at this point had stopped bothering him long ago.

They’d had four nights together six years ago, and even though Dean thought of himself as a detail-oriented guy, there’d been too many women—too many ie-Somethings, women worth fucking but not remembering—that any real memory of Lisa had been blotted out, replaced with flashes of breasts and thighs, fake moans and thrusting hips. He knew she was still the best he’d ever had (ever would have, he sometimes realized) but that didn’t mean he knew a damn thing about her. That smile he’d held onto, that smile of love and warmth and acceptance, wasn’t real. Just wishful thinking, as impossible to hold onto as the smell of fresh-cut grass.

Fuck, but he was one morose bastard. If Sam knew what he was thinking he’d never hear the end of it. But Sammy didn’t know. Couldn’t know, because the last thing in the world Dean would ever tell his little brother was how he felt. Or what he wanted. Because Lisa (and Ben, and that nice little house) wasn’t the hunt. It didn’t have anything to do with Sam, or demons, or angels. It was just some dream he had. Something he held onto when the rest of it became too much to bear. And he knew it wasn’t real.

Dean had fought too many nightmares to believe in dreams. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t have them.

Light was showing in the east, just a thin gray line that promised an eventual sunrise. Dawn was still hours away, of course, but Dean knew morning would come early today. He’d go in, kick Sam out of bed, shower, and maybe hit a laundromat. Then breakfast, and they’d head out…somewhere. Anywhere but here. He was finished with Dearborn, Michigan.

Sam would know where they should go.

Dean hauled himself out of the car, and went to go see what would happen next.

.end.

  


[   
](http://www.statcounter.com/free_hit_counter.html)   



End file.
